Welcome to Texas justice: You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.

Sunday, June 10, 2012

Posthumous exoneree Tim Cole's memory honored in Lubbock

In Lubbock, the city has approved a memorial for Timothy Cole, who died in prison after being falsely convicted of rape and was later posthumously exonerated. Reported the Lubbock Avalanche Journal:

A bronze relief sculpture and granite marker will pay permanent
tribute to Timothy Cole, just blocks away from the Texas Tech bar
district where he was arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.
His brother, Cory Sessions, helped sway the Lubbock City Council to
support the memorial to his brother, who died imprisoned in 1999 after
being wrongfully convicted in the 1986 sexual assault of a fellow Tech
student.

“Tim may be remembered for things that happened after his life, but
we remember him for what happened during his life,” Sessions said
Thursday morning at the council meeting. “The most important part of his
headstone is the dash, and that’s what we remember Tim by.”

The council approved a renewed proposal by Councilman Todd Klein to
honor Cole with a memorial on city property to be designated as a park
at 19th Street and University Avenue.

Klein designed the proposal with the help of attorney Kevin Glasheen,
who has represented several wrongfully convicted people seeking
compensation, including the Cole family.

Glasheen said his firm would pay the estimated $25,000 for the
monument, a granite marker with a bronze relief sculpture of Cole and
text similar or identical to the text on a state historical marker
located near Cole’s Fort Worth grave site.

He praised Cole for his demonstration of character throughout his
trial and imprisonment, recalling how Cole would not admit guilt even if
it meant he had a chance for parole.

“That kind of character and integrity is worthy of honor,” Glasheen said.

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